By Selena Burke, News Correspondent
With temperatures bubbling up to 80 degrees this week, it’s time to brush off old, rusty bikes and put them to good use.
Boston’s only after school, mobile, youth-run bike shop, Chain Reaction, opened March 14 at Yawkey Club of Roxbury to provide bicycles, bicycle repairs and free bike mechanic lessons.
The bike repairs offered are typically $5 or less, depending on the parts needed for the repair. There is also a “learn it, earn it” repair option, where bikers are taught how to repair their bike themselves for free.
“If you don’t have the money to pay for whatever it is that you need fixed, but you can stick around for a little bit, and what we’ll do is teach you how to repair whatever it is that’s broken and then you do it yourself, and you get the repair for free while you also have gained that knowledge,” said Evan Hanlon, a 17-year-old Boston Latin School student and employee.
This youth-run initiative by Bikes Not Bombs (BNB) also provides free tune ups, like inflating tires, greasing bike chains and adjusting crooked brake pads, Hanlon said. BNB, founded in 1984, is a not-for-profit organization that “uses bicycles as vehicles for social change,” according to the group’s website, by reclaiming thousands of bikes each year through donations and creating local and global programs that provide development, jobs and sustainable transportation and mobilize youth and adults to be leaders in community transportation.
Chain Reaction employs five young students, including Hanlon, who have participated in BNB’s Earn-A-Bike and Girls in Action programs, and expressed interest in working with the organization. Earn-A-Bike is a six-week program where participants completely overhaul a bike that they eventually get to keep, while learning how to safely ride and navigate through Boston. Girls in Action, similar to the co-ed course Earn-A-Bike, is an all-girls program that combines bicycling mechanics and riding for girls aged 12-18.
When starting Chain Reaction, the goal was to reach youth in low-income neighborhoods, said Sarah Braunstein, youth development specialist and grant writer at Bikes Not Bombs. To reach more than one neighborhood, the shop will rotate around several different locations in the city to see which attracts the most people, then will set up a more permanent shop. The shop will be open at the Yawkey Club until April 4, then move to a new location at the Orchard Gardens Club in Roxbury from April 9 to 30. Chain Reaction will set up shop at Blue Hill Club in Dorchester from May 7 to 30, and at the South Boston Club in South Boston June 4 to 27.
“We really wanted to focus on increasing access to youth in neighborhoods where they don’t have a bike shop that they can get to very easily,” Braunstein said.
Chain Reaction, open Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:30-6 p.m., offers used bikes for generally under $100, with most for sale around $70. These bikes, part of the roughly 6,000 used bikes donated to Bikes Not Bombs each year, are repaired and restored for riding by the student mechanics running Chain Reaction.
“We can sell them for less than $100, whereas if you walked in a bike shop, and you couldn’t get a bike for $50,” said Stephane Alexandre, a 17-year-old Boston Latin Academy student and employee.
Hanlon said customers should know their needs before buying a bike. He suggested a hybrid or city bike in place of racing bike for riders with back issues. Hybrid bikes blend road and mountain bike characteristics, forming a sturdy, comfortable bike ideal for riding on streets and bike paths, while city bikes are more optimized in their gearing and frame construction for the rough-and-tumble of urban commuting, such as potholes, drainage grates and jumps off city curbs. In contrast, racing bikes, also known as road bikes, are designed for competitive cycling, with lower handlebars, closer wheels and more closely-spaced gear ratios.
“The goal of the whole thing is not really to make any money, it’s mostly just to provide accessibility and knowledge about biking to people who don’t have it,” Alexandre said.
The shop will be on hiatus during the summer because the tools, parts and youth staff will be running another program, On My Way, On My Bike, an intro cycling and mechanics program. Chain Reaction will resume in September and will end in late October to coincide with cycling season, said Braunstein, adding the program could stay open longer depending on interest.
Another goal of Chain Reaction was to spread biking culture and collect data to provide Boston with information about biking services people required, including creating additional bike lanes, Alexandre said. Encouraging people to bike saves money along with saving the environment, Braunstein said.
Chain Reaction is one of numerous initiatives trying to up bike ridership and culture in the city. After Boston was named one of the least biker-friendly cities by Bicycling Magazine in 2006, Mayor Thomas M. Menino launched Boston Bikes to create safer and more inviting conditions for bikers. Ridership went up 122 percent between 2007 and 2009, and continues to increase every year, according to the City of Boston website. The change was so drastic, with 1,500 new bike parking spaces and 33 miles of bike lanes added as of 2010, according to the 2010 Boston Bikes Annual Summary, that Boston clenched the 26th spot in Bicycling Magazine’s America’s Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities in 2011.
“I’d like to see more biking happening in Boston,” said Hanlon. “It’s well on its way to becoming a really awesome biking city, and I think that it definitely should and I want to do my part.”
